


The Incessant Dissolving of Silk

by KrisEleven



Series: Falls the Shadow [3]
Category: Circle of Magic - Tamora Pierce, Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrisEleven/pseuds/KrisEleven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brushing dirty strands of hair out of her face, she regarded the creation on her lap. She hadn't been given a cloak by the grave-robbers who had found her in Zakdin, but she had enough rags collected to make something that would keep her warm, create a hood to cover her eyes and keep her in darkness, and cover the thread-bare dress she still wore, even a year after the plague.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Incessant Dissolving of Silk

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place about a year after Sandry is found in the store-room by grave-robbers, instead of Niko.

Sandry shivered in the cold. It wasn't a delicate tremor; the cold had long since seeped into her bones and she shook so that either her teeth chattered, or her hands trembled too much to manipulate the rags of silk held in her hands. Since that was unacceptable, she allowed her teeth to click-clack and put the sound out of her mind.

Brushing dirty strands of hair out of her face, she regarded the creation on her lap. She hadn't been given a cloak by the grave-robbers who had found her in Zakdin. It hadn't mattered too much in the warm Pebbled Sea, but she was sure they had been heading north for the past month or so now and nights were getting cold.

Boards creaked above her head and she froze, even her shivering silenced as she looked up through the hulls' boards, waiting to see if the door leading down to the prison would be opened. There was another door separating her cell from below-deck, but there was always a chance light would be brought down into her sanctuary, and she had to brace herself when that occurred. There were some moans, stifled, from the other side of the hull. Instead of an opening door and footsteps on the stairs, though, the walker moved on after a few long moments, and Sandry allowed herself to focus again on the task at hand.

She had collected a few strips of silk from one of the caravans they had moved her in, while they traveled on land over the past weeks. She had enough rags collected to make something that would keep her warm, create a hood to cover her eyes and keep her in darkness, and cover the thread-bare dress she still wore, even a year after the plague, but she had no threads and none of her captors would give her any.

Instead, she turned the rags she had collected over in her hands, identifying them by feel alone. This was the sea-in-a-storm-grey cotton that she had found in the first ship they had used to take her away from Hatar island. This was what was left of a sack they had once put over her head. That was green cotton, of a dress left behind by a slave. This, a pretty rose linen she hadn't expected to find in the basement of an inn sympathetic to the money some grave-robbers paid to keep quiet; it had been a curtain or bedsheet, once, but was ragged now. They were all unwanted pieces, discarded until she came across them, desperate enough to make them something new.

Except her newest, her silks. She turned the wisp-smooth lengths in her hand. Once they had left the sea, they had been travelling over land for weeks, in wagons. She had been hidden away in one of them, packed in with the goods they were going to sell in Namorn when they got rid of her, and she had managed to steal these lengths of silk. She had known at the time that they would probably be missed, but she couldn't pass them up once she came across them. She didn't know what colour they were; she had been in the dark in the wagons, and was moved across some docks and into the lower decks of the ship at night, but she loved the feel of them. They whispered to her, in the darkness.

 _Perhaps I don't need threads_ , she thought, as she handled her treasures. _Will you help me make something warm?_ she asked them, and felt their chorus of agreement.

Smiling into the darkness, she set about arranging the linen into the correct shape. As she started pulling threads loose so she could attach her other bits of cloth into the vague shape of a cloak, she allowed her mind to wander. They were going to Namorn; she was almost positive about it now. She had known they were planning something for her. There had been other slaves and captives in their care in the long months she had been with them, all sold before they left their ship on the Pebbled Sea, but they had been treated differently than she was. They had never had Sandry beaten, or whipped, had never taken her away to screams and cat-calls; she had heard all of that happen to others.

Sandry they left alone, in the darkness. She whispered for the green dress to cooperate with her as she arranged it as a hood, using the tear along the front to separate it into a hem for the bottom of the cloak, as well. It eventually agreed, and she used the threads that came loose to attach each piece into place.

She didn't mind the darkness. It was the light that brought more slaves, the light that brought slavers, the light that brought pain and change and things she'd rather not (ever ever) see. In the darkness, she could sit with her silks and be left alone.

But they were going to Namorn, and if ten-year old noble, just-a-girl Sandry wasn't smart enough to figure out that the grave-robbers who found her through her nurse's magic were going to ransom her, eleven-year old Sandry-in-the-dark was. She considered her position as she attached the grey cotton in strips so it fell down the back of the cloak, filling in some of the thread-bare or torn patches of the rose sheet. She had been talking to her collection of fabrics so long that she was beginning to get a feel for it, and clothes and ropes and scarves and sheets of the men above her very nearly called out to her. She was locked down in the darkness, but they rode the very men she hated and would be more than happy to strangle them in their sleep, or drag them overboard, or hang them from the rigging. Sandry had sat up an entire night and talked to the cloth overhead, knowing that she could kill the men who kept her; she could kill them all.

But then she would have to step into the light, for the first time in a year... she found the concept one she could hardly bear to think about.

They were taking her to her cousin. Berenene would pay the ransom, Sandry was sure. Right now, they were doing just as she wanted, and she was left to her own devices as well... No need to take matters into her own hands, then.

And if cousin doesn't pay, Sandry thought as she lined the interior of the clock with the sack, for warmth, then it will be time for another plan.

There was a quiet sobbing from the other side of the door. The slaves had been bought a few ports ago and were to be sold in the next few nights. With darkness, the ship stopped and the slavers began looking for entertainment. This group of slaves knew this by now, they had been on the sea for nearly a week. Sandry had been on the other side of a door or room from this scene for a year; something she had initially found so horrific had become routine. She didn't even consider those chained on the other side of the door as she planned the slavers' futures. She didn't think about it, much, but the girl she had been a year ago wouldn't recognize the person she was now.

Perhaps wouldn't want to recognize her. Sandry's fingers froze on her almost-completed cloak, but there was too much history in that, too much she had lost and couldn't reclaim, too much blood and pain and tears and so she let it go for the last time. In it, the last of the child she had been slipped away, dissolving in the endless darkness of this new world she lived in.

Sandry let the silk flow between her fingers before she asked them to weave their way into the collar of the cloak, under the hood.

She draped it around her shoulders and pulled the hood up over her hair. The silk fell around her cheeks and over her forehead to her nose, covering her eyes entirely. The door to the hull creaked open, footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the sobbing grew louder. Sandry drew the cloak of rags around her and waited in the darkness.


End file.
